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"Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But there is a key to this riddle, and that key is called Russian national interest." - British prime minister Winston Churchill speaking to the House of Commons regarding the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union (22 June 1941).
On 21 August 1968 Soviet tank commanders were ordered to fire at Czech civilians as part of the plan to oust the country's liberal-minded President Alexander Dupchek. This sceen of carnage abruptly ended the reform process that was known as the "Prague Spring", but its gruesome hostilities did not deter the generation of Czech youths who would lead their country through the "Velvet Revolution" twenty years later. On 21 August 1991 a very different political transformation occurred. Three days after hard-line communists ousted Soviet President Gorbachev to prevent the signing of a treaty that would redefine the entire concept of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gorbachev was restored to power, and the coup plotters committed suicide or were jailed. At few times in world history did events alter as rapidly and with as incomprehensive future ramifications as the dismantling of the Soviet Union. It was an empire that officially abhorred the concept of empire and was based on the untenable principle that reducing all people to penury creates equality. Tsarist russia and the Soviet sphere of influence covered a significant portion of the earth. Russia and the fourteen other Soviet Socialist Republics occupied approximately 18% of the world. Including central and eastern European states, the estimate ranks as much as 20%. A single entity ruled beyond reason by pungent ideological fervor held in its grasp a fifth of the world's land area. Expanding the effects beyond the 25 October 1917 Russian Revolution to include the Chinese communist conversion and the Third World commitments, the communist realm incumpassed half to two thirds of the world population. In the early days Mao Tse-Tung was a devout Stalinist who devised his practices in accordance with the Soviet model. These subjects of communist rule were obligated to endure the "dictatorship of the proletariat", as Lenin described Marxism. Despite the end to Soviet hegemony, 43% of the globe still bears the burdens of this failed political/economic ideology.
The copyright of the article Russia's Search for Liberty: Part I. Truths and Dreams in International Trade is owned by Carey Goodman. Permission to republish Russia's Search for Liberty: Part I. Truths and Dreams in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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